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N. Korea Graduates to Major World Threat

WASHINGTON, Monday, Oct. 9 Â North Korea said Sunday night that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it has joined the club of nuclear weapons states. [Link]

I remember a Jay Leno joke that he told sometime around the Iraq invasion (and I paraphrase), “We have good news and bad news tonight. The good news is we found the weapons of mass destruction. The bad news is they’re in North Korea.”

There is a very small chance that it’s not true. The US has not officially confirmed that the recorded seismic event was nuclear. Maybe they really did blow up 5,000 to 15,000 tons of TNT?

I grew up in the heart of the Cold War, under the threat of a nuclear nightmare that would end all life as we know it. Somehow you thought that no one would ever be mad enough to start WWIII. There could be no winners.

This threat is different. Kim Jong-il, Korea’s leader, is, at least by some accounts, mad. And Mr. Kim, according to sources like the Washington Post, is selling weapons (likemissiless) to Syrian and Iran.

Memeorandum is a good place to start for a mix of mainstream media and blog coverage.

To see what sort ofdevastationn atomic bombs cause, check the Atomic Archive.